Albums and songs that changed my view on music include:
Talk Talk's Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock for music as landscape
John Cage's "4'33"" and his I-chang music for music as philosophy
William Basinski -The Disintegration Loops as well as Brian Eno for music as philosophy and emotion at the same time
Oval - 94diskont for philosophy and emotion
Pavement, Built to Spill, and Modest Mouse on cleverness
Joanna Newsom on poeticism
Suicide on darkness
a few others come to mind...
but albums that changed my life for no percieved reason include Entertainment!, Pink Flag, Damaged, Los Angeles, Fire of Love, Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill, and others
Albums and songs that changed my view on music include:
Talk Talk's Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock for music as landscape
John Cage's "4'33"" and his I-chang music for music as philosophy
William Basinski -The Disintegration Loops as well as Brian Eno for music as philosophy and emotion at the same time
Oval - 94diskont for philosophy and emotion
Pavement, Built to Spill, and Modest Mouse on cleverness
Joanna Newsom on poeticism
Suicide on darkness
Benjamin Britten "Saint Nicolas" : sung this as a kid in a choir. The harmonic arrangement is really strange yet exciting. It has stuck with me ever since.
Swingle Singer "Bach Concerto for Two Violins" : played this with orchestra and couldn't stop syncopating the lines à la Swingle Singers. I bought all their records.
I'm not comfortable with the phrase "changed my life", but whatever, important stuff for me:
So I saw this guy on TV when I was six; thought he was dope and then I became interested in music, which I still am today. You have to start somewhere. I eventually came to own his two albums too, and I thought they were pretty good
Some guys in my class had probably lent some hip hop records from their older brothers, which they brought to school and played, and I thought they were cool as fuck for doing so. So I told my parents that I wanted some rap music. In the next two or three years, I grew a little collection of 20-30 cd’s which included artists such as Eminem, 50 Cent, Kanye West, Akon, The Game, N.W.A, Jay-Z and 2Pac. Eminem was my favorite artists, but I believe Get Rich or Die Tryin’ was the first cd I got in that period
During the same period, I must’ve heard my dad playing this one day:
And I was converted to rock music from that point, which I guess I still am today. It was the song Don’t Cry that did it for me: this guitar thing sounded like the greatest thing ever. Consequently, I started to dig up some rock albums from my parents’ collection. I remember particulary liking Nirvana’s Nevermind and a greatest hits collection with Jimi Hendrix
When I was 10 or 11, I got this idea that hip hop was bad (my parents most likely had a huge influence on this; they must’ve been worried that their little son jammed songs like A Bitch Iz a Bitch on his stereo); even to the point where I got rid of my hip hop cd’s. Instead I started focusing on guitar based rock music, which I continued with for four years or so. The most important album for me was possibly:
At least it was my favorite for some time, and it has a lot of qualites which I appreciated at that time. Other important artists from that time includes Kyuss, Arctic Monkeys, Sex Pistols, Kings of Leon, The Clash, Metallica, Tool, Black Sabbath, Sonic Youth, Anti-Flag, Rage Against the Machine, Alice in Chains, Eagles of Death Metal and others
When I was 12, I had to write a longer assignment for school, and I chose to write about rock music: thus I became familiar with names of the more acclaimed rock artists, which sparked my interest to listen to some of them. Most importantly, it led me to buy this cd:
Which I immediately claimed to be the greatest album I had ever heard, which it might just still be today (though I don’t really listen to it anymore; it’s in my DNA or something). Although I my primary interests continued to be guitar based alt/hard rock, I added The Velvet Underground and a few bands like The Cure, Joy Division, The Beatles and Pink Floyd to my list of favorite bands
At 15, I discovered BEA and I realized there was a great load of awesome albums waiting for me to listen to them. The first internet-inspired purchase I did (possibly because of the intriguing artwork) was:
And I was blown away by how good it was. From this point, BEA became my #1 reference for album recommendations, and in the first seven months of 2011 I bought or became familiar with lot of the albums in the top of BEA’s overall list. The most important purchase I made during this period was this:
I was a bit frightened to buy this, as jazz was something completely foreign to me (I had heard Kind of Blue from my parents’ collection, and I didn’t understand what I was supposed to enjoy). Therefore, I treated the album a bit as task I had to overcome: I listened to it more closely and with greater attention than I had ever done with anything previously. I eventually grew to love it, and I believe this album made me grow a lot as a music listener (I also bought Mingus Ah Um that same day, but I gave Coltrane the most attention in the first place)
And then, at some point in 2011, I bought this motherfucker:
And I was convinced that better music could possibly not exist. I loved it so much that some of the albums I had previously picked up that year started to seem boring: why the fuck would anyone listen to The Beatles, Pink Floyd or David Bowie when they could be listening to this?
So my interest in classic rock got reduced greatly. Instead, in search of music similar to Captain Beefheart, I discovered Piero Scaruffi’s website. And at the end of the year, I was listening to stuff like Neu!, The Pop Group, Tim Buckley, Can, Slint, Pere Ubu, Suicide, My Bloody Valentine and The Red Krayola. Artists who pretty much shaped my taste and whose music I still love today. And in fact, I think my music journey has continued from that point; not that I haven’t discovered important albums in the last two years, but I feel like they’ve been a part of a natural progression which started at this point
Bought this in March 2012, and today I’m luckily reconciled with hip hop again. Rock is still my comfort zone and what I listen to the most, but today I’d rather be a rapper or a hip hop producer than a rock guitarist if I had to make music in a serious level, just like I would've said before I turned 10
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
